THE MILLENNIUM REPRESENTS THE RITUAL DEATH AND REBIRTH OF HISTORY, ONE THOUSAND-YEAR EPOCH YIELDING TO ANOTHER

THE MILLENNIUM IS THE COMET that crosses the calendar every thousand years. It throws off metaphysical sparks. It promises a new age, or an apocalypse. It is a magic trick that time performs, extracting a millisecond from its eternal flatness and then, poised on that transitional instant, projecting a sort of hologram that teems with the summarized life of the thousand years just passed and with visions of the thousand now to come.

The approaching millennium year 2000 is counted from the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem of Judea, in the year (so the Bible says) when Caesar Augustus decreed...